172 WHALING 



fed it) the two mincers cut them into thin slices left fast to the 

 black skin like a side of bacon sliced down to the rind. Bible 

 leaves, the thin slices were called; and "Bible leaves!" roared 

 by the mate at the mincer, warned him to cut them even thinner, 

 for the thinner the ''leaves," the more quickly the boiling would 

 extract the oil. 



From the small they had stripped the tough blubber called 

 white-horse; they had cut the junk into horse-pieces to be tried 

 out separately. The piles of oily blubber and casks of fragrant 

 sperm, the ivory from the lower jaw, and perhaps a tid-bit of 

 whale meat or brains, were all that was left of the great beast 

 (all — but a good sixth part, none the less) when with wood 

 from below they kindled the fires under the try-kettles, which 

 they had filled with minced blubber. 



The try-works of an American whaler consisted of a structure 

 of bricks, called the caraboose, which was built on deck, with a 

 tank of water under it to keep the planking from catching fire. 

 In the forward side of this brick structure were hinged the 

 wide fire doors. In the top of it were set the try-pots — two or 

 three, as the case might be — which held perhaps two hundred 

 gallons apiece. Above them was built a wooden platform 

 to serve as a roof, through which the rectangular funnels of 

 copper rose from the fire boxes. 



To feed the fires, which they started with wood, they used 

 the fritters of tried-out blubber, dry, oily fragments known 

 among our own whalemen as scraps, which burned with intense 

 heat and thick black smoke. Thus, once the boiling was well 

 started, it perpetuated itself by supplying its own fuel. 



From the try-pots they dipped the oil into a big copper 

 cooler, and from the cooler into casks in which it stood until it 

 was as cool as it would get. Then they coopered the casks anew 

 and stowed them down. 



Consider the ship, drenched with oil and blood from the flens- 

 ing, grimy from stem to stern with soot from her fires, blackened 

 aloft from the smoke of burning chips. The smell of those 

 burning chips has penetrated to the uttermost cracks and cran- 

 nies; the taste of it seems to have impregnated every cask of 



